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Omar Khadr trial imperils all child soldiers

By Roméo DallaireIshmael Beah

Wed., Aug. 18, 2010timer3 min. read

In commencing the trial of Omar Khadr at Guantanamo Bay, the current U.S. administration has become the first government in modern history to prosecute a former child soldier for war crimes. This unprecedented case not only risks the rule of law and due process concerning juvenile justice, it puts in peril hundreds of thousands of child soldiers to potential detention and prosecution for war crimes around the world.

In July 2002, a severely wounded 15-year-old Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen, was captured following a firefight in Afghanistan. Accused of throwing a grenade that allegedly killed an American soldier, Khadr has spent a quarter of his life detained at Guantanamo Bay. In the past eight years of detention, he has faced cruel and inhumane treatment, including the threat of rape, physical and psychological abuse, possibly torture, and survived over three years of solitary confinement.

Despite being a juvenile, Khadr was incarcerated with adult inmates and subjected to unlawful interrogation techniques that created a serious risk of physical and psychological harm. It was under these conditions, and with no legal representation, that his self-incriminatory confessions were elicited and will be used as evidence in his Guantanamo Bay trial.

A poignant reality of contemporary conflicts is that increasingly children are being used as cheap and readily available weapons of war. From Colombia to Sri Lanka, from Sierra Leone to Uganda, thousands of children have been used in armed conflict situations. In Afghanistan, our forces are seeing the increasing use of children in combat operations, including as suicide bombers.

Both Canada and the U.S. have been leaders in eradicating the use of children in armed conflicts. Yet, by putting a child soldier on trial, we undermine our ability to ask other countries to follow international standards for the treatment of children affected by war.

Since 2000, both Canada and the U.S., along with more than 125 other state-parties to the Optional Protocol on Children in Armed Conflict, have provided millions of dollars in efforts to demobilize, rehabilitate and reintegrate former child soldiers and have consistently advocated for the elimination of the recruitment and use of children in war. Moreover, demobilized child soldiers are considered victims who were coerced into committing serious crimes by adults.

It is hypocritical that Omar Khadr is not receiving the same rights as former child soldiers from countries such as Sierra Leone. His trial puts all former child soldiers in danger and undermines the tireless work that we have done to show child soldiers can be rehabilitated.

One of the problems with this case is that people do not have compassion for Khadr, but have compassion for child soldiers in other parts of the world. If a 15-year-old child in Sierra Leone or Uganda kills someone in a war, he is a victim in need of rehabilitation, but as soon as that child is accused of killing an American soldier, legal standards no longer apply.

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It is a shame that Canada has allowed its citizen to be subjected to a process that is an affront to the rule of law. Equally shameful is that the U.S. is using a child detainee charged for war crimes as a test case for an immoral and illegal tribunal.

As early as August 2002, a U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld held that “(w)e must protect the freedoms of even those who hate us, and that we may find objectionable. If we fail in this task, we become victims of the precedents we create. We have prided ourselves on being a nation of laws applying equally to all and not a nation of men who have few or no standards.” Unfortunately, and much to the dismay of all who stand for the rule of law and due process, today we are all becoming silent victims.

The urgency and seriousness of this matter calls for an immediate halt to the court proceedings. Both Canada and the United States should agree to a process that will lead to Khadr’s repatriation, rehabilitation and reintegration back into Canadian society.

Roméo A. Dallaire, senator and retired lieutenant-general, is the former commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). Ishmael Beah is the author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier and a UNICEF representative from Sierra Leone

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